Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Blogging Tories

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I ranted a bit on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Canadian blogosphere, but I think it's relevant to this discussion also. Friday 15:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Parsing the discussion

[edit] Summarised arguments

The below represents how I summarise the debate, nothing more. - brenneman(t)(c) 12:19, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

  • 1.1.1 Arguments to delete
    • 1.1.2 Notable members don't make notability, 1.1.6 Not notable only, 1.1.5 Non notable plus
      Thirteen editors whow had previous community involvment felt this way.
    • 1.1.3 Covered under "self published authors""
      One editor felt this way.
    • 1.1.4 Sockpuppet concerns
      Ironiclly, this was contributed by a very new member of the community.
    • 1.1.7 No argument presented
      Discarded.
  • 1.1.8 Arguments to keep
    • 1.1.9 Philosophical, 1.1.10 Keep for symmetry,1.1.11 Systemic bias
      As these do not address the issue of this article, discarded. Wikipedia is not consistant.
    • 1.1.12 Notable due to number of members or notable members
      Two editors whom had signifigant conributions felt this way.
    • 1.1.13 Notable in more words, 1.1.14 Just "notable"
      Three editors with any signifigant edit history felt this way.
    • 1.1.15 No argument presented
      Discarded if there had been any.
  • 1.1.16 Arguemts of broader nature

It is worth noting that it is difficult to prove a negative, so an argument could be made that saying "not notable" is a claim without evidence. In the absence of any credible counter argument that demonstrates notability this claim carries some weight. Fifteen "not notables" are easily canceled by a single "notable, per [link to new york times] and [link to gaurdian]". This did not occur.

Once editors who failed to present any argument were set aside, as well as those whose arguments were claims without evidence, and those whose arguments did not adress the merits of this article, there does exist a clear consensus to delete.

brenneman(t)(c) 12:35, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blogging Tories

[edit] Arguments to delete

[edit] Notable members don't make notability

This article was marked for AfD by an anon for reasons that seems to be making a point, but then blanked (apparently the anony thought better of it). But the AfD tag was still on the page when I went over to see if it was worthy of being deleted, and I think it is. So I'll save the anonymous guy the trouble of being branded a point'er and nominate it myself. It's a not extraordinary blog group, and though it has some interesting members it doesn't make the group notable in of itself. Delete. Lord Bob 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC) )

[edit] Covered under "self published authors""

  • Unless someone can convince me why not to, I'm going to vote delete. Don't we have a policy on self-published authors? -R. fiend 01:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet concerns

  • Delete - Not notable. More importantly, I just wanted to point to this post on a blog, which, in my view, contravenes Wikipedia's no sock puppet policy. It may be unfairly influencing the balance of this conversation.
    unsigned vote by Dbarefoot, his ninth edit, even if he's right about the potential meatpuppet storm. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Non notable plus

  • Delete as blogcruft, and I say this as neither an American or a Canadian. I'm leaning towards individual country "blogosphere" (shudder) articles as weak keeps, but any subset NO unless there's a damn good reason. - Randwicked 01:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete This, as well as Progressive Bloggers is not notable, this is no conspiracy theory, these don't belong on wikipedia. -Skrewler 23:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. not notable, vanity advertisement. --Timecop 23:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC
  • Delete blogcruft — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 14:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • sockpuppet Dawg —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.217.124.14 (talk • contribs) 09:34, November 16, 2005.
  • Delete sockpuppets galore + the topic is extremely non-notable.  Grue  18:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete blogs are not generally worth encyclopedic treatment. Dottore So 11:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. No systematic bias, we should delete all pointless American blogs too. —Cleared as filed. 11:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Who cares about crappy blogs? Waste of bandwidth. --86.2.56.178 12:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Soft Delete The article wasn't worth mentioning from the beginning -- and I don't think much encyclopediac use will ever come of it. --Depakote 12:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not notable only

  • Delete Nope, sorry, "blogs" are not worth a shit in the real world. JacksonBrown 05:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, American or Canadian, they aren't notable. -- Kjkolb 00:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Not notable. Incognito 23:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. Not notable whatsoever. --Impi.za 00:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No argument presented

  • Delete 65.34.232.136 02:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    user has just nineteen edits, fifteen of which are to AfDs. Bearcat 03:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. -- Femmina 00:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • DELETE: Not Notable
    unsigned vote by CocoCPDalbert (talk • contribs), user's first edit. Lord Bob 23:43, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments to keep

[edit] Philisophical

  • Keep. How can one "new media" delete references to another "new media". Blogs are useless? As opposed to anything that has been posted to the internet dating back to bulletin boards? Blogging is part of the future of the internet, get use to it.
  • Keep. Organized deletion vandalism merits banning. --FOo 05:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)'
    • Comment Please discount this vote on the pretext that the user is not evaluating VfDs on the basis of validity but on accusations of vandalism. --Veew 14:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Its ridiculous to say that large blog groups like the Blogging Tories are not notable. Take this recent quote from the globe and mail talking about the upcoming election, "there are some who think the Internet and Internet blogs may play a bigger role." Blogging Tories is the biggest force there is in the Canadian political blogosphere, so at the very least, we should wait and see before we say it isn't notable.--Esto 19:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I think I know why people don't find the membership to be convincing. These people could be members of a local supper club too, right? Does that make the club significant? The blogging torries is a website who aggregrates content from people's blogs. Couldn't there be any number of such websites? What makes this one special? I could make a website tomorrow that aggregates content from these people's blogs. Their best claim to fame seems to be when newsworthy events happened which were leaked on the Internet. By having a connection to that leak, they claim they're significant. This is crazy. If I ran into Dick Cheney with my car and got my name in the news, do I deserve an encyclopedia article? Certainly not, and neither do the Blogging Tories. No disrepect meant to them or their politics; I'm strictly speaking about what does or does not belong in an encyclopedia. Friday (talk) 02:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, you asked. Here: 227,000 vs 7,750,000 vs 595,000 google results for each respective group you listed. Which is precisely why they were NOT put up for AFD when I was scanning Category:Blogs for useless cruft. --Timecop 04:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
What part of "a bigger country can inherently generate more Google links than a smaller one can" implies that smaller countries should therefore be less entitled to Wikipedia coverage? Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I lied. Rottweiler wasn't in [[:Category::Blogs]] which is why I missed it. --Timecop 04:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Other articles are not the concern here. Web stuff is overrepresented here at Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that unverifiable and insignificant websites sometimes have articles about them. Let's judge each article on its own merits, or maybe use the WP:WEB guideline for websites. To answer your specific question, Daily Kos appears to have significant traffic compared to the other ones, even if adjusted by a factor of 5 for the populartion difference between US and Canada. Friday (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"A factor of 5" does not account for the population difference between the US and Canada. And the WP:WEB guideline quite specifically states that notability can be defined by Alexa rank OR other criteria of the type that have already been proven here, not Alexa AND other criteria. Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right. Call it a factor of 10 then. It still doesn't compare. I don't see how other criteria have "already been proven", per my above objections which have not been answered. Friday (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
For starters, as I've stated before, a larger country by definition generates a higher volume of Internet traffic than a smaller one, which is precisely why the notability of a website has to be defined by its own context. Argument by Internet traffic alone, by definition, is an assertion that Canadian stuff has less notability just because it's Canadian — the arguments are inseparable from each other, because Canada's smaller size means a site of Canadian-specific interest inherently can't generate the traffic to compete on raw numbers. And statistically, simply multiplying the lesser site's traffic volume by the population differential isn't a mathematically reliable comparison of influence. The questions of the site's influence in Canadian politics, its notable members, its media presence, etc. have already been answered numerous times. The only valid measure of influence is whether this and ProgBlog are as notable within Canadian politics as Daily Kos is within American politics. The contextual relationship has to be taken into account. Bearcat 04:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Keep for symmetry

  • Keep. Notable right-wing blogging site, counterpart to Progressive Bloggers. Luigizanasi 02:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Needs to be treated equivalently to Progressive Bloggers. Though my own vote is personally to keep, they either need to both be kept or both be deleted. Any final result which saw one kept and the other deleted would be entirely unacceptable. Accordingly, they should really both be considered in a single vote. Bearcat 02:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Systemic bias

  • Keep. Both Progressive Bloggers and Blogging Tories are notable by any definition other than a US-is-the-centre-of-the-universe one. I'm personally a little tired of the deletists around here. User:Dr.Dawg17:25 15 November 2005 [DST]
    vote actually by 209.217.124.169 (talk • contribs), has eleven edits, ten to AfDs, one to this article. Lord Bob 22:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable in Canada. Please be aware of systemic bias that has been identified in Wikipedia against non-American entries.--Simon.Pole 23:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notable due to number of members or notable members

  • Strong Keep. The point of an online encyclopedia is to be a resource for more than just the things you would find in a regular encyclopedia. I checked out the website, and they have a sizable readership, so it seems they aren't some small group that is just wasting space on the Wiki - this belongs here. Keep it. John Hawke 19:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    vote actually by 134.153.184.163 (talk • contribs). Lord Bob 19:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable. Also encyclopedic by viture of its having notable participants and by virtue of its being a subject that many people would want to learn about. 11:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Has notable members and has a reasonable level of readership. Capitalistroadster 22:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. Blogging Tories is an invaluable resource for Conservatives and politically active Canadians, this is not just some random personal blog; it is a huge online community with thousands of readers and contributors.
  • Strong Keep.An important part of the political landscape - just see the number of users - Davey
  • Strong Keep.These bloggers are committed to exposing information omitted by the Candian main stream media. Many of the members of the blog roll are Members of Parliament. These citizens are on the forefront of the new age of democracy in Canada. Slider!
    unsigned vote by 24.57.81.147 (talk • contribs); no edit history prior to this AFD. Bearcat 21:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

16 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep. First thing, I can’t understand how someone can say the Blogging Tories are “not notable” when there are prominent Members of Canadian Parliament as part of the group. I think those people are grossly mischaracterizing the Blogging Tories or wrongly mistaking them as only being two or three random blogs. Blogging is fast becoming an important medium in politics and the Blogging Tories have become one of the largest forces in the Canadian political blogosphere. There are even numerous examples where they have had a direct impact in Canadian politics. There is no reason why an important website like the Blogging Tories shouldn’t be on Wikipedia.--Esto 02:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notable in more words

  • Keep. I was in great doubt on this one, but it seems useful to me. Usually I vote for deletion on this kind of things, but if they actually achieved something (however left-wing I am), this may be kept. Nazgjunk - - Signing is for Whimps 20:47, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP! - Important site to represent the Canadian Political Blogging world. It's very significant in how it effects the Canadian Political Atmosphere!--Frank TML93 01:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's first edit Bearcat 01:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep Nascent group in Canadian politics, particularly with elections imminent. Jtmichcock 00:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Just "notable"

  • Strong Keep. This blogroll is important to Canadians. User:'Expert' Tom12:56 16 November 2005 [DST]
    user's first edit. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's notable for anyone who's interested in Canadian blogging. -- The Invisible Hand 08:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's seventh edit. Lord Bob 08:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable. mennonot 11:31, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No argument presented

  • none

[edit] Arguemts of broader nature

  • Systemic bias in favor of all things internet-related has been identified on Wikipedia also. Countless flash movies, personal websites, blogs and myspace users get articles written about them, when they generally shouldn't. Individual politicans may be encyclopedic, but their blogs rarely are. This article is about a website that aggregates content from a bunch of different blogs. Surely the "notability" of a few noteworhty politicans does not automagically transfer that far up the chain? What's next, an article about the physical server that this website runs on?
  • For those that care about verifiability (which I believe we frequently lose sight of), this article has no references. If anyone can find references to make this verifiable, please put them in the article, not on the Afd page. People reading the article need to be able to see why this website, out of the millions, appears in an encyclopedia. Friday 00:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Comment. One of Wikipedia's recognised strengths is that it is up-to-date, especially on recent phenomena. We have articles on every single imaginable video game, most music albums you care to mention, practically every single piece of software out there, a number of usenet newsgroups, Wikipedia did better than the regular news media on recent events such as the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Where else but Wikipedia can people find hopefully neutral information on the recent and increasingly important phenomenon of blogging, especially political blogs, which are not neutral by their very nature. NPOV articles on Blogging groups (not necessarily individual blogs, mind you), perform a vital service to the world at large. Luigizanasi 04:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Commet Please note that User:Timecop has proclaimed a "War on Blogs" on his user page. His user page also says that he is a leader of the Gay Nigger Association of America. The GNAA is a notorious group of organzied trolls on the internet, who actually forced Slashdot to go their original karma system because of unrelenting spam. Looks like they're targetting Wikipedia now. Great. --Simon.Pole 09:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Merge with Canadian blogosphere, since I went through all of the links provided above, and I could not find any evidence that this site had any overwhelming influence in Canadian politics. That said, I believe the content does deserve a mention in the overall blogosphere site, since as a whole, it does possess more influence than in other countries. Titoxd(?!?) 04:43, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm willing for my suggestion to count as a merge as well if it helps build consensus. I don't believe this should have its own article, but it's possible it could be mentioned elsewhere. However, the article you've suggested as a merge target is on Afd also, and I believe it's original research. I wonder if Politics of Canada or Political Culture of Canada is a good place for this stuff. I still think whatever's used should be verifiable, though. Friday (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blogging Tories

[edit] Arguments to delete

This article was marked for AfD by an anon for reasons that seems to be making a point, but then blanked (apparently the anony thought better of it). But the AfD tag was still on the page when I went over to see if it was worthy of being deleted, and I think it is. So I'll save the anonymous guy the trouble of being branded a point'er and nominate it myself. It's a not extraordinary blog group, and though it has some interesting members it doesn't make the group notable in of itself. Delete. Lord Bob 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete This, as well as Progressive Bloggers is not notable, this is no conspiracy theory, these don't belong on wikipedia. -Skrewler 23:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. not notable, vanity advertisement. --Timecop 23:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Not notable. Incognito 23:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete. Not notable whatsoever. --Impi.za 00:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. -- Femmina 00:39, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, American or Canadian, they aren't notable. -- Kjkolb 00:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete as blogcruft, and I say this as neither an American or a Canadian. I'm leaning towards individual country "blogosphere" (shudder) articles as weak keeps, but any subset NO unless there's a damn good reason. - Randwicked 01:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Unless someone can convince me why not to, I'm going to vote delete. Don't we have a policy on self-published authors? -R. fiend 01:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete 65.34.232.136 02:57, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    user has just nineteen edits, fifteen of which are to AfDs. Bearcat 03:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Non-notable. *drew 03:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Nope, sorry, "blogs" are not worth a shit in the real world. JacksonBrown 05:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. No systematic bias, we should delete all pointless American blogs too. —Cleared as filed. 11:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Delete Who cares about crappy blogs? Waste of bandwidth. --86.2.56.178 12:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Soft Delete The article wasn't worth mentioning from the beginning -- and I don't think much encyclopediac use will ever come of it. --Depakote 12:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete blogcruft — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 14:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • sockpuppet Dawg —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.217.124.14 (talk • contribs) 09:34, November 16, 2005.
  • Delete - Not notable. More importantly, I just wanted to point to this post on a blog, which, in my view, contravenes Wikipedia's no sock puppet policy. It may be unfairly influencing the balance of this conversation.
    unsigned vote by Dbarefoot, his ninth edit, even if he's right about the potential meatpuppet storm. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete blogs are not generally worth encyclopedic treatment. Dottore So 11:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments to keep

  • Strong Keep. Blogging Tories is an invaluable resource for Conservatives and politically active Canadians, this is not just some random personal blog; it is a huge online community with thousands of readers and contributors.
  • Keep. How can one "new media" delete references to another "new media". Blogs are useless? As opposed to anything that has been posted to the internet dating back to bulletin boards? Blogging is part of the future of the internet, get use to it.
  • Keep. Both Progressive Bloggers and Blogging Tories are notable by any definition other than a US-is-the-centre-of-the-universe one. I'm personally a little tired of the deletists around here. User:Dr.Dawg17:25 15 November 2005 [DST]
    vote actually by 209.217.124.169 (talk • contribs), has eleven edits, ten to AfDs, one to this article. Lord Bob 22:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Has notable members and has a reasonable level of readership. Capitalistroadster 22:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable in Canada. Please be aware of systemic bias that has been identified in Wikipedia against non-American entries.--Simon.Pole 23:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep Nascent group in Canadian politics, particularly with elections imminent. Jtmichcock 00:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable right-wing blogging site, counterpart to Progressive Bloggers. Luigizanasi 02:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Needs to be treated equivalently to Progressive Bloggers. Though my own vote is personally to keep, they either need to both be kept or both be deleted. Any final result which saw one kept and the other deleted would be entirely unacceptable. Accordingly, they should really both be considered in a single vote. Bearcat 02:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Notable. Also encyclopedic by viture of its having notable participants and by virtue of its being a subject that many people would want to learn about. 11:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP! - Important site to represent the Canadian Political Blogging world. It's very significant in how it effects the Canadian Political Atmosphere!--Frank TML93 01:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's first edit Bearcat 01:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Organized deletion vandalism merits banning. --FOo 05:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)'
    • Comment Please discount this vote on the pretext that the user is not evaluating VfDs on the basis of validity but on accusations of vandalism. --Veew 14:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's notable for anyone who's interested in Canadian blogging. -- The Invisible Hand 08:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    user's seventh edit. Lord Bob 08:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep notable. mennonot 11:31, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. I was in great doubt on this one, but it seems useful to me. Usually I vote for deletion on this kind of things, but if they actually achieved something (however left-wing I am), this may be kept. Nazgjunk - - Signing is for Whimps 20:47, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. The point of an online encyclopedia is to be a resource for more than just the things you would find in a regular encyclopedia. I checked out the website, and they have a sizable readership, so it seems they aren't some small group that is just wasting space on the Wiki - this belongs here. Keep it. John Hawke 19:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    vote actually by 134.153.184.163 (talk • contribs). Lord Bob 19:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep.These bloggers are committed to exposing information omitted by the Candian main stream media. Many of the members of the blog roll are Members of Parliament. These citizens are on the forefront of the new age of democracy in Canada. Slider!
    unsigned vote by 24.57.81.147 (talk • contribs); no edit history prior to this AFD. Bearcat 21:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

16 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep.An important part of the political landscape - just see the number of users - Davey
  • Strong Keep. This blogroll is important to Canadians. User:'Expert' Tom12:56 16 November 2005 [DST]
    user's first edit. Lord Bob 00:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Its ridiculous to say that large blog groups like the Blogging Tories are not notable. Take this recent quote from the globe and mail talking about the upcoming election, "there are some who think the Internet and Internet blogs may play a bigger role." Blogging Tories is the biggest force there is in the Canadian political blogosphere, so at the very least, we should wait and see before we say it isn't notable.--Esto 19:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. First thing, I can’t understand how someone can say the Blogging Tories are “not notable” when there are prominent Members of Canadian Parliament as part of the group. I think those people are grossly mischaracterizing the Blogging Tories or wrongly mistaking them as only being two or three random blogs. Blogging is fast becoming an important medium in politics and the Blogging Tories have become one of the largest forces in the Canadian political blogosphere. There are even numerous examples where they have had a direct impact in Canadian politics. There is no reason why an important website like the Blogging Tories shouldn’t be on Wikipedia.--Esto 02:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


  • I think I know why people don't find the membership to be convincing. These people could be members of a local supper club too, right? Does that make the club significant? The blogging torries is a website who aggregrates content from people's blogs. Couldn't there be any number of such websites? What makes this one special? I could make a website tomorrow that aggregates content from these people's blogs. Their best claim to fame seems to be when newsworthy events happened which were leaked on the Internet. By having a connection to that leak, they claim they're significant. This is crazy. If I ran into Dick Cheney with my car and got my name in the news, do I deserve an encyclopedia article? Certainly not, and neither do the Blogging Tories. No disrepect meant to them or their politics; I'm strictly speaking about what does or does not belong in an encyclopedia. Friday (talk) 02:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Ok, you asked. Here: 227,000 vs 7,750,000 vs 595,000 google results for each respective group you listed. Which is precisely why they were NOT put up for AFD when I was scanning Category:Blogs for useless cruft. --Timecop 04:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
What part of "a bigger country can inherently generate more Google links than a smaller one can" implies that smaller countries should therefore be less entitled to Wikipedia coverage? Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I lied. Rottweiler wasn't in [[:Category::Blogs]] which is why I missed it. --Timecop 04:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Other articles are not the concern here. Web stuff is overrepresented here at Wikipedia, so it's not surprising that unverifiable and insignificant websites sometimes have articles about them. Let's judge each article on its own merits, or maybe use the WP:WEB guideline for websites. To answer your specific question, Daily Kos appears to have significant traffic compared to the other ones, even if adjusted by a factor of 5 for the populartion difference between US and Canada. Friday (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"A factor of 5" does not account for the population difference between the US and Canada. And the WP:WEB guideline quite specifically states that notability can be defined by Alexa rank OR other criteria of the type that have already been proven here, not Alexa AND other criteria. Bearcat 04:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, you're right. Call it a factor of 10 then. It still doesn't compare. I don't see how other criteria have "already been proven", per my above objections which have not been answered. Friday (talk) 04:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
For starters, as I've stated before, a larger country by definition generates a higher volume of Internet traffic than a smaller one, which is precisely why the notability of a website has to be defined by its own context. Argument by Internet traffic alone, by definition, is an assertion that Canadian stuff has less notability just because it's Canadian — the arguments are inseparable from each other, because Canada's smaller size means a site of Canadian-specific interest inherently can't generate the traffic to compete on raw numbers. And statistically, simply multiplying the lesser site's traffic volume by the population differential isn't a mathematically reliable comparison of influence. The questions of the site's influence in Canadian politics, its notable members, its media presence, etc. have already been answered numerous times. The only valid measure of influence is whether this and ProgBlog are as notable within Canadian politics as Daily Kos is within American politics. The contextual relationship has to be taken into account. Bearcat 04:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arguemts of broader nature

  • Systemic bias in favor of all things internet-related has been identified on Wikipedia also. Countless flash movies, personal websites, blogs and myspace users get articles written about them, when they generally shouldn't. Individual politicans may be encyclopedic, but their blogs rarely are. This article is about a website that aggregates content from a bunch of different blogs. Surely the "notability" of a few noteworhty politicans does not automagically transfer that far up the chain? What's next, an article about the physical server that this website runs on?
  • For those that care about verifiability (which I believe we frequently lose sight of), this article has no references. If anyone can find references to make this verifiable, please put them in the article, not on the Afd page. People reading the article need to be able to see why this website, out of the millions, appears in an encyclopedia. Friday 00:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Comment. One of Wikipedia's recognised strengths is that it is up-to-date, especially on recent phenomena. We have articles on every single imaginable video game, most music albums you care to mention, practically every single piece of software out there, a number of usenet newsgroups, Wikipedia did better than the regular news media on recent events such as the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Where else but Wikipedia can people find hopefully neutral information on the recent and increasingly important phenomenon of blogging, especially political blogs, which are not neutral by their very nature. NPOV articles on Blogging groups (not necessarily individual blogs, mind you), perform a vital service to the world at large. Luigizanasi 04:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Commet Please note that User:Timecop has proclaimed a "War on Blogs" on his user page. His user page also says that he is a leader of the Gay Nigger Association of America. The GNAA is a notorious group of organzied trolls on the internet, who actually forced Slashdot to go their original karma system because of unrelenting spam. Looks like they're targetting Wikipedia now. Great. --Simon.Pole 09:27, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


  • Merge with Canadian blogosphere, since I went through all of the links provided above, and I could not find any evidence that this site had any overwhelming influence in Canadian politics. That said, I believe the content does deserve a mention in the overall blogosphere site, since as a whole, it does possess more influence than in other countries. Titoxd(?!?) 04:43, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm willing for my suggestion to count as a merge as well if it helps build consensus. I don't believe this should have its own article, but it's possible it could be mentioned elsewhere. However, the article you've suggested as a merge target is on Afd also, and I believe it's original research. I wonder if Politics of Canada or Political Culture of Canada is a good place for this stuff. I still think whatever's used should be verifiable, though. Friday (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bias by inclusion

I have some concern about the fact that the issue I raised in my comments has ended up being exactly what happened here, namely that this got deleted but Progressive Bloggers got kept. Firstly, it constitutes bias by inclusion to treat them differently from each other. Secondly, if one actually wanted to argue for treating them independently, by any objective measure (Alexa ranking, number of members, number of notable members, etc.) Blogging Tories would be the more notable of the two. So there's simply no criterion under which one could possibly make a case that ProgBlog is notable enough to stick around but the Tory group isn't.

I've discussed the matter with a couple of other people who were involved in this discussion, and we're all in agreement that it's inherently POV to allow an article about one but not the other, and the two therefore have to be treated in tandem. Although my own position on both debates was to keep, and although Lord Bob's preference was to delete, he and I both agree that the status quo is an absolutely unacceptable result...and we both would rather see the opposite of our original preferences happen than this.

I'm thus asking for some input on which approach people would prefer:

  1. Nominate Progressive Bloggers for its third AFD.
  2. Nominate Blogging Tories for undeletion.

One of those two options must be pursued; the status quo of having one article kept and the other deleted cannot stand. They must either both stay, or both go; it's an inherently unacceptable POV-by-inclusion to permit only one of the two to have an article. So which is it gonna be, guys? Bearcat 18:12, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

This argument is based upon several assumptions, all of which are false.
  1. Wikipedia is consistant. Not only is this not true in practice, it's not even true in theory. Each discussion is, to some degree, isolated from every other. Closing admin's standards, to use an example, vary wildly.
  2. These articles are connected. No evidence has been presented that these articles form any sort of matter-anitmatter pair.
  3. That NPOV extends beyond the article level. This is another way to insert point one, and is just as false. To have a factual balanced article about fire does not require that we have one about ice as well.
brenneman(t)(c) 20:54, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Fire vs. ice does not raise a question of political bias. Ideologically-based blogging groups (especially ones which explicitly define themselves as existing in direct competition with each other) do. This is not comparable to fire vs. ice; it would far more comparable to saying that the Democratic Party deserved an article but the Republican Party didn't, based on some mysterious alternate criterion which failed to take into account their inherent contextual equivalency to each other.

And your comment entirely fails to address my second point, that while it would be technically possible (albeit wrongheaded) to formulate an argument that Blogging Tories were notable enough to be here and Progressive Bloggers weren't, the notion that ProgBlog is notable enough but Blogging Tories isn't is a complete non-starter. The Blogging Tories have a significantly higher Alexa ranking. The Blogging Tories have a larger member base. The Blogging Tories have far more members who are already notable enough for other reasons to have Wikipedia articles in their own right. It's simply not possible to claim that ProgBlog is more notable than Blogging Tories. There isn't one single criterion on which that argument stands up to two seconds' worth of scrutiny.

And your claim that no evidence has been presented that these articles form any sort of matter-antimatter pair is entirely wrong; their interconnectedness was quite explicitly spelled out in both articles, in both AFD debates and in Canadian blogosphere. That's five different places in which it's been made abundantly and unmistakably clear.

And, for the record, I'm not some frustrated Tory trying to raise a ruckus because my pet article lost; I'm ideologically on the ProgBlog side of things. I should technically be happy that "my side" survived, but I'm not -- because selective inclusion constitutes a major POV problem. The status quo just cannot stand; that this is coming from somebody who's on the side of the article that survived should underline how problematic the situation is POV-wise. Bearcat 23:16, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Please, for the love of pete, WP:CITE some sources. Give me a single major media extract that shows that these two are the conjoined twins of the blogging world. - brenneman(t)(c) 23:52, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Your request is kinda strawman-ish, but here is a report from Canada's biggest TV network on the Canadian blogosphere's impact on a major political story. It links to both BT and PB, as well as various individual blogs that commented on the issue.
-- The Invisible Hand 01:33, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey, we can't deleted this while Galatea (mythology) still exists! They are two sides to the same coin!
There's no straw man here. If you're trying to make the argument that both must be included, then you need to back that up with some pretty strong evidence. Thanks for the link, I'll have a look at it. - brenneman(t)(c) 01:42, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Two Canadian political blogging groups. One is left-wing. One is right-wing. Both explicitly define themselves as each other's ideological counterweights. Both articles explicitly discuss the fact that they exist as each other's ideological counterweights. The article Canadian blogosphere is in large part about the fact that the Canadian blogosphere is largely divided into two ideologically-counterweighted blogging groups called Progressive Bloggers and Blogging Tories. What more evidence is needed or even possible? And can the inherently absurd red herring comparisons; a Greek mythological figure has no bearing on the equivalency or non-equivalency of two symbiotic Canadian political blogging groups whose interrelationship is already explicitly spelled out in the articles. Bearcat 07:17, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Ok, this really isn't that hard - WP:CITE. The articles don't do it, you're not doing it. I can't yet looked at the one link that has been provided, but please actually go and read WP:V and WP:CITE. Do you think that we would simply accept Gene Ray's word on something, or would we want citations, references, etc? I'm like a broken record here, but it is one of the most fundamental precepts of Wikipedia, and you just don't seem to get it.
    brenneman(t)(c) 07:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, there's nothing I'm failing to get. Let's try a metaphor here:
  1. Somebody nominates United States Democratic Party and United States Republican Party for deletion.
  2. On some weird technicality, they end up with opposite results to each other despite the fact that their contextual interconnectedness has already been repeatedly spelled out, so one of the two gets deleted but the other one gets kept.
  3. A person who's ideologically on the side of the article that got kept expresses concern that the conflicting result creates a POV issue against a group he doesn't even politically agree with, and asks for input on a list of options that explicitly includes deleting the article on the group that's actually in line with his own personal POV. And he even manages to get agreement from a person who voted to delete both articles that keeping both would still be a vastly preferable resolution to the one that actually occurred.
Given those three conditions, does one somehow need to provide external links to prove that the two parties have an inherent contextual relationship to each other, or is it sufficient that the two articles already link to each other, that several people in the AFD debates repeatedly spelled out the contextual relationship, and that Politics of the United States already discusses in exhaustive detail how the two are inherently related to each other as the "left" and "right" poles of the political spectrum in their particular context? And if somebody does provide you with an external link, is it somehow valid to continue acting as though the evidence doesn't exist just because you haven't personally looked at it?
This discussion is really a moot point now anyway; somebody else already VFU'd this article and got it recreated while I was wasting my time responding to red herrings about Nereids. So we're now sitting here arguing about the past. I guess that makes this EOD. Bearcat 08:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
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